Strange Sally Diamond

Written by Irish author Liz Nugent, Strange Sally Diamond (2023) follows the story of a woman caught between her perceptions and the perceptions of others and haunted by a traumatic yet forgotten past. As the repressed memories and events of her childhood continue to influence her personality, actions, and psychological well-being, the novel shifts between various timelines and multiple narrators to unveil the mysteries of her past. Strange Sally Diamond incorporates multiple genres, displaying aspects of both a mystery novel and a crime novel even as it explores the complexities of family tragedies and community dynamics.

Strange Sally Diamond is Liz Nugent’s fifth novel. Nugent is an international bestseller of crime fiction and has been honored with the James Joyce Award and the Dublin International Literary Award.

This guide refers to the 2023 Simon & Schuster edition.

Content Warning: Both the source material and this guide include descriptions of racism, anti-gay bias, child assault, abduction, imprisonment, sexual abuse and rape of both children and adults, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and suicide. The illegal incineration of a corpse and the drowning of a child are also described. The narrative also includes ableist and prejudiced attitudes toward the protagonist, whose behavior patterns deviate from neurotypical social standards.

Plot Summary

Sally Diamond is a 43-year-old woman who has spent decades living in isolation with her father, Thomas Diamond. When Thomas falls ill and dies, Sally attempts to incinerate his body because she simply does not see the point of holding funerals or romanticizing corpses. Locals believe Sally to be strange because she exhibits antisocial behavior, patterns of self-isolation, and anger management issues. She has kept herself isolated since grade school because she knows that she is different and prefers to avoid society’s judgments. However, soon after Thomas’s death, the townspeople alert the police, who assume that Sally has killed Thomas and was trying to dispose of the body to hide evidence of her crime. A longtime family friend named Angela comes to Sally’s defense, helping Sally to hire a lawyer who successfully negotiates the case and gets the charges dropped. Angela also discovers letters that Thomas wrote to Sally before his death. These letters slowly reveal the truth about Sally’s origins and her mysterious life.

Thomas’s letters reveal the source of Sally’s various mental health conditions. The letters relate that Sally is the biological daughter of Denise, a woman who was abducted, imprisoned, and repeatedly abused by a man named Conor Geary. Although Denise and Sally were finally found and freed, Conor Geary was never caught. Sally and Denise spent months in Thomas’s psychiatric ward, where he treated both of them for trauma. Because Denise was unable to cope with her trauma, Thomas separated mother from child with the belief that doing so would help Denise to recover. Instead, Denise died by suicide, so Thomas and Jean adopted the seven-year-old Sally. (The narrative eventually reveals that before her adoption, Sally’s original name was Mary; Thomas and Jean changed her name to Sally Diamond when they adopted her.)

The narrative returns to the present, and the adult Sally receives a package in the mail from New Zealand. Signed by someone named “S,” the package contains a worn teddy bear that Sally immediately recognizes as Toby, her childhood toy. Although she has no specific memories of Toby, she knows that Toby is hers. This event alarms Angela and Sally’s aunt, Christine. They involve the police, who begin a search for Conor Geary in New Zealand. Meanwhile, Sally confronts the issues caused by her isolation and decides to make a new life for herself. She befriends two children, Abebi and Maduka, who help Sally to realize that she is capable of liking others. Sally also develops a friendship with the children’s mother, Martha, who introduces her to yoga. Meanwhile, a therapist named Tina helps Sally to work through her anger management issues. Sally also starts making new friends and integrating herself into society. She decides to sell her family’s isolated house and finds a dilapidated cottage to renovate.

One of Sally’s new friends, Mark, is new in town. He seems friendly at first, but Sally’s friends and family find him strange. He is also obsessed with Sally’s past and is even caught rifling through Thomas’s old office. Angela discovers that Mark is actually Denise’s brother. He has sought Sally out to learn more about her. Losing her when he was a child represents a lingering trauma that has ruined his life and his sense of self. Mark and Sally start a new relationship based upon mutual respect for the past and a desire for answers. Sally is drawn to Mark because he is her only remaining family. However, Sally continues to receive messages from New Zealand, which makes her worry that Conor Geary knows where she lives.

The narrative reveals that the packages from New Zealand are actually being sent by Peter Geary, Sally’s biological brother. Peter is also a product of Denise’s rape at the hands of Conor. However, he has experienced a very different upbringing than Sally has. Due to Conor’s deep-seated misogyny, Conor never cared about Sally as he cared about Peter.

In a series of flashback chapters from the young Peter’s perspective, the narrative recounts key formative moments from Peter’s early life. In this earlier time frame, Conor keeps Peter locked up and entirely isolated from society and school. However, Peter knows no better than to believe that Connor is taking good care of him. As a child, Peter has no way of knowing that his circumstances are abusive. When he meets his mother, Denise, he believes Conor’s lies that Denise is a danger to herself and others and must therefore be locked away. One day, an attempted robbery occurs while Conor is out of the house. Peter tells Conor about this, and Conor packs Peter up and moves to New Zealand, certain that the robber now knows about Denise. The police find Denise and free both her and Sally. Meanwhile, Peter and Conor have adopted new identities in New Zealand. Peter becomes Steven Armstrong, and Conor becomes James Armstrong. They still live off the grid, but Peter is now given greater independence although he still doesn’t attend school. A desperately lonely boy, he befriends his neighbor, Rangi, who is of Māori descent. Conor’s racist attitudes cause him to disapprove of Rangi. One day, Peter and Rangi sneak off to the lake, where Rangi dies by drowning. Peter does not act to save Rangi because Conor has told him that he has a mysterious and rare disease that will kill him if anyone touches his skin. This lie is designed to keep Peter from getting close to others.

Because Conor wants to assuage Peter’s loneliness, he kidnaps a 14-year-old girl named Lindy and imprisons her in the barn. Conor spends decades raping and abusing Lindy while Peter befriends her. Peter falls in love with Lindy and chooses not to see his father’s abuse of the girl. However, Peter finally discovers the truth when Lindy makes him confront the facts. Peter then goes to the doctor on his own and learns that his disease isn’t real. As the two drive back home, Peter confronts Conor about this, and the altercation causes Peter to crash the car, inadvertently killing Conor. Now free of Conor, Peter decides to keep Lindy for himself. He doesn’t physically or sexually abuse her, but he doesn’t free her. For decades, he keeps Lindy and tries to take care of her so well that she will fall in love with him. Lindy ultimately submits to Peter, and they have a sexual relationship that leads to the birth of a daughter, whose name will later be revealed as Amanda. Peter takes Amanda away from Lindy and leaves the baby on the steps of a church. He later learns on the news that his daughter has been found and adopted. Lindy eventually dies of appendicitis. Depressed and lonely, Peter decides to reach out to Sally Diamond, whom he has followed on the news since she made headlines by trying to incinerate Thomas’s body.

Peter travels to Ireland, where he provides Sally with a DNA testing kit to prove that they are related. Sally and Mark both take the test, which proves that Peter is indeed their kin. However, these tests also reveal the existence of Peter’s daughter, a woman named Amanda. Sally and Peter reunite, but they have a difficult time connecting. Sally feels empathy for him, but Peter is odder even than Sally and is markedly depressed and anti-social. Peter has also been contacted by a podcaster named Kate who has figured out what the police could not: that Peter and Conor Geary are connected, and that they are involved in Lindy’s disappearance. To avoid Kate and the inevitable police investigation that her podcast will initiate, Peter needs to start his life over again under a new identity. Sally gives Peter 1,000,000 euros: his part of the inheritance from the sale of Conor’s former house in Dublin County. Peter tells Sally that he plans to travel around Ireland, but instead, he buys falsified documents with a new name and moves to America. By the time the police find out who he is, he is long gone. The betrayal that Peter is also a kidnapper and an abuser destroys Sally, causing her to isolate herself and submit to her anger issues once again.

In America, Peter finds a secluded part of the country where he builds a barn and prepares it to house his next kidnapping victim. Meanwhile, Peter’s daughter Amanda has formed a healthy identity separate from the story of her birth and adoption. She has become a successful concert pianist, and one day, she receives a worn-out teddy bear from America. She doesn’t know who the bear is from or why she has received it, but she considers it to be her lucky charm.